Sunday, December 27, 2015

Saving the World Economy: Paul Krugman and Olivier Blanchard in Conversation (video above)

Two of the foremost experts on the global economy / international economy, Paul Krugman and Olivier Blanchard, engage in a discussion about recent crises around the world and how to prevent global economic collapse. Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist, noted New York Times columnist and author, and distinguished professor in the Ph.D. Program in Economics at the Graduate Center. Olivier Blanchard, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2008 to 2015, is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at MIT. Published on Dec 21, 2015

Presented on December 7, 2015, by GC Public Programs and the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

Monday, December 21, 2015

2016 Election to Be a Drag on U.S. Economy: Calsters CIO -- Christopher Ailman, chief investment officer at Calsters, and Dan Fuss, vice chairman at Loomis Sayles, discuss the psychology of markets and investing and the negative impact the 2016 presidential race will have on markets and the U.S. economy. They speak on "Bloomberg ‹GO›." Published on Dec 8, 2015

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

So what time does Tuesday’s Republican debate start? CNN doesn’t seem to want you to know. - The Washington Post: "On CNN.com, a weekend news story bore the headline, “What time is the #GOPDebate? And everything else you need to know.” This allegedly helpful explainer article told readers that “CNN’s coverage of the first debate will begin at 6:00 p.m. ET and coverage of the second debate will start at 8:30 p.m. ET.” It even mentioned that “CNN will also offer a live stream of the debate on CNN.com’s homepage and across mobile platforms from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET.”... The main event with leading candidates including Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson starts at 9 p.m. [EST]"

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Fosun's Billionaire Chairman Reported Missing - Fosun International Chairman Guo Guangchang has gone missing according to published reports in China's Caixin magazine. Bloomberg's Nick Wadhams has the story on "On the Move." Published on Dec 11, 2015

It's not easy being a billionaire in China!See also:China's 'Warren Buffett' said to be 'assisting authorities'
Financial TimesFosun International, China's largest private conglomerate, said its chairman, Guo ... Chinese billionaire captured global attention by buying some of the west's ... The report about Mr Guo were only the latest involving senior ... A friend of the Guo family said family members had lost touch with him.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Why Brazil's Economy May Get Even Worse Before It Gets Better - In today's "Single Best Chart," Bloomberg's Tom Keene displays Brazilian GDP going back to 1996 as the nation's economy fell deeper into recession, contracting 1.7 percent in the three months ending in September. Published on Dec 1, 2015

Monday, October 26, 2015

Don't Wait for Rising Interest Rates - It may seem as if interest rates will never rise, but they probably will, and Morgan Stanley's Greg Vaughan explains why waiting for it to happen is a dangerous strategy. Published Oct 21, 2015

Monday, October 19, 2015

Emerging Markets a ‘Worry’ for Anshu Jain - Anshu Jain, the former co-chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank AG, said some emerging markets that have been hurt by plunging commodity prices and an outflow of funds are a “worry.” “In certain parts of ex-Japan, ex-China, ex-India Asia we could have some bad news,” Jain said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-In-chief John Micklethwait at Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit 2015 in London. He pointed to Brazil, South Africa, Russia, Turkey as other emerging markets that harbor risks. Published on Oct 6, 2015

Sunday, October 11, 2015

Apple's New Products: Are They Game Changers? - Technalysis Research President and Chief Analyst Bob O'Donnell discusses the launch of the latest products from Apple, the new features and if they are worth the upgrade. He speaks to Bloomberg's Angie Lau on "First Up." Sept. 10, 2015NASDAQ: AAPL

Jobs Report Is Lackluster, Raising Concern on Economy’s Course - The New York Times: "“There’s nothing good in this morning’s report,” said Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist at Northern Trust in Chicago. “We had very low levels of job creation, wage growth isn’t budging and the unemployment rate would have risen if the labor force participation rate hadn’t fallen.”" (Oct 2, 2015)Economists Can't Find the Silver Lining in Today's Jobs Report - Bloomberg Business: "When the U.S. jobs report is released each month, there's typically enough nuance to offer something for everyone — the good and the bad. Today proved to be a feast for the bears. "When you look through all the details of the data, there just isn't anything good to hang your hat on," said Thomas Simons, a money-market economist at Jefferies LLC in New York. "It's been years since we've seen such an unambiguously bad report." Silver linings were tough to come by in the September jobs data. Payrolls came in at a much-weaker-than-forecast 142,000, while August and July figures were revised down. Wage growth was nonexistent for the month, with average hourly earnings actually falling by a penny on average. The softness in manufacturing endured, with factory payrolls falling by 9,000 when they were expected to show no change. With dollar appreciation and sluggish overseas growth providing headwinds, it was the biggest back-to-back decline since 2010... "It's Been a Terrible Week for the Credit Market - Bloomberg Business: "According to Bank of America Merrill Lynch credit strategists led by Hans Mikkelsen: "The two weakest days in recent memory for high-grade credit occurred this week [on Monday and Thursday]." Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank Strategist Jim Reid pointed out that spreads on corporate debt are nearing levels usually seen during recessions. While credit has often been called the canary in the coal mine for global markets, because of its tendency to show signs of strain before stocks, the question now is whether bond investors are saying something important about deteriorating fundamentals or overshooting in their pessimism."Gundlach warns of 'another wave down' - Business Insider: ""The reason the markets aren't going lower is people are holding and hoping," Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview. "The market bottoms out when people are selling and sold out — not when they are holding and hoping."

Traders Don't See Fed Moving Until at Least March, Futures Show - Bloomberg Business: "“The Fed has been overoptimistic for a long time on their forecasts for growth,” said Gary Pollack, who manages $12 billion as head of fixed-income trading at Deutsche Bank AG’s Private Wealth Management unit in New York. Markets are also signaling expectations for a lower Fed target down the road, according to a note from Jim Vogel, an interest-rate strategist at FTN Financial Capital Markets in Memphis, Tennessee. Last month, the Fed forecast the tightening cycle will end with the funds rate at 3.5 percent. However, Treasuries now indicate a peak of 1.75 percent for almost five years, according to Vogel."

Sunday, September 27, 2015

On September 27th, 2015 there will be a very rare event in the night sky – a supermoon lunar eclipse. Watch the animated feature above to learn more.

For the first time in more than 30 years, you can witness a supermoon in combination with a lunar eclipse. Late on Sept. 27, 2015, in the U.S. and much of the world, a total lunar eclipse will mask the moon’s larger-than-life face.

Watch NASA’s live stream from 8:00 p.m. until at least 11:30 p.m. EDT broadcast from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., with a live feed from the Griffith Observatory, Los Angeles, Calif. Mitzi Adams, a NASA solar physicist at Marshall will discuss the eclipse and answer questions from Twitter. To ask a question, use #askNASA.

Throughout human history, lunar eclipses have been viewed with awe and sometimes fear. Today, we know that a total lunar eclipse happens when the full moon passes through the darkest part of Earth's shadow, the umbra.

Sunday’s supermoon eclipse will last 1 hour and 11 minutes, and will be visible to North and South America, Europe, Africa, and parts of West Asia and the eastern Pacific. Weather permitting, you can see the supermoon after nightfall, and the eclipse will cast it into shadow beginning at 8:11 p.m. EDT. The total eclipse starts at 10:11 p.m. EDT, peaking at 10:47 p.m. EDT. (source: nasa.gov)

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Facebook, Dollars and Sneakers: A Refugee's Survival Kit - Thousands of refugees continue to arrive every day in Athens, on ferries from the country's outlying islands. The route they take from the Greek capital to the Macedonian border is now well travelled, and many local businesses are feeling the benefits. Bloomberg's Tom Mackenzie followed one group of Syrian refugees as they navigated the latest leg of their journey. Published on Sep 18, 2015.

Thursday, September 17, 2015

Donald Trump is winning the "Search Race" among GOP contenders for President. Above: Debate 2: Top Searched Republican Candidate By County - Top Searched Republican Candidate on Google by Count since first GOP debate. Highlight individual areas to see details. Scroll right to see second most searched candidate by county, change since the first debate and battleground states

Monday, September 14, 2015

How Dangerous Is September for the Markets? - Pimco Global Strategic Advisor Richard Clarida discusses the U.S. economy, Fed policy and the markets. He speaks on "Bloomberg Surveillance." (September 8, 2015)

Friday, August 28, 2015

nhc.noaa.gov: The Mariners' 1-2-3 Rule, or "Danger area", is indicated by shading. The 1-2-3 Rule, commonly taught to mariners, refers to the rounded long-term NHC forecast errors of 100-200-300 nautical miles at 24-48-72 hours, respectively. The contour defining the shaded area is constructed by accounting for those errors and then broadened further to reflect the maximum tropical storm force (34 knot) wind radii forecast at each of those times by the NHC. The NHC does not warrant that avoiding these danger areas will eliminate the risk of harm from tropical cyclones. Users operating in the vicinity of these systems are advised to continually monitor the latest Forecast/Advisories from the NHC and proceed at their own risk. Areas are also shaded for systems in which NHC forecasters believe there is an adequate chance of tropical cyclone formation within the next 48 hours. source: National Hurricane CenterFor current information:

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, interviewed by Barry Ritholtz for Masters in Business on Bloomberg View. Nate Silver received his Bachelors in Economics in 2000 from University of Chicago. He is the author of The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t.

Silver came to the public attention’s with his accurate forecasts of political elections, from Senate to the President, in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Silver used the statistical methodology of baseball, rather than the anecdote driven approach the mainstream media had embraced.

He published under a pen name at Daily Kos, before the New York Times made his blog fivethirtyeight.com part of the New York Times site. Covered in the podcast are subjects from sports to politics including where we are in the electoral process and what it means for the general election, including Donald Trump's surge."

Sunday, August 16, 2015

A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof.

(extension) A knowable thing or event (eg by inference, especially in science).

(metonymy) A kind or type of phenomenon (sense 1 or 2).

Appearance; a perceptible aspect of something that is mutable.

A fact or event considered very unusual, curious, or astonishing by those who witness it.

A wonderful or very remarkable person or thing.

(philosophy, chiefly Kantian idealism) An experienced object whose constitution reflects the order and conceptual structure imposed upon it by the human mind (especially by the powers of perception and understanding).

Sunday, August 9, 2015

Real Digital Politics: Google gives a different story than Mainstream Media Narratives, "Inside the Beltway" Pundits, and Poltical Consultants' Focus Groups. Fox's GOP debate had record 24 million viewers - Aug. 7, 2015: "Fox's GOP debate was watched by 24 million viewers on Thursday night, according to Nielsen data, making it the highest-rated primary debate in television history. The event, featuring Donald Trump in his first debate, was also the highest-rated telecast in the nearly 20 year history of the Fox News Channel, a spokeswoman said. Rival executives and campaign aides also predicted unusually high ratings for the event, thanks to curiosity about Trump and the controversy over the "top ten" candidate criteria. But the ratings shattered even the rosiest expectations for the beginning of debate season. Television executives were stunned."See also:

Monday, August 3, 2015

U.S. Housing Aspirations Have Changed: Meyer - Bank of America Merrill Lynch Deputy Head of U.S. Economics Michelle Meyer discusses the health of the U.S. real estate market and move back towards urban centers. She speaks with Tom Keene and Brendan Greeley on Bloomberg Television's “Bloomberg Surveillance.” (Published on Jul 10, 2015)

Monday, July 27, 2015

100 Most Beautiful Airplanes at Oshkosh Fly-In - Every year hundreds of airplane enthusiasts gather in Oshkosh, Wisconsin to show off aircraft of all shapes and sizes, from vintage WWII bombers to custom gliders to Piper Cubs. Bloomberg gathered the highlights in one video. (Video by Mike Zorbas and Amy Marino.)

Sunday, July 12, 2015

Japonica Partners Founder and CEO Paul Kazarian discusses his company being one of the largest private bond holders in Greece and his thoughts on the latest proposal by the country to its creditors. He speaks with Jonathan Ferro on Bloomberg Television’s “On The Move.” Published on Jul 10, 2015

Counter from Paul Krugman:

Austerity and the Greek Depression - The New York Times: "... So now what? A few months ago I thought that stabilizing Greece at a small primary surplus might work, in the sense that it would allow a return to growth even if it didn’t do anything to make up lost ground. But the creditors are still demanding a rising primary surplus over time, and balking at top line debt relief that might at least offer a clear marker of progress. If those are the requirements for Greece to stay in the eurozone, Grexit is inevitable."

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Mohamed A. El-Erian | Facebook: "Lots of people will (and should) be keeping a close eye on Chinese stocks this week, starting with the government. In partnership with brokerage firms, the authorities opted for a big bang package over the weekend to stabilize what had been a volatile and rapidly correcting market (chart below from cnbc.com). This intervention reflects concerns about the risk of an adverse economic and social fallout. It did not take long for markets on Monday to test the robustness of the measures. The same is happening at the start of Tuesday’s session. Failure to contain volatility could lead to another leg down in stocks."#China #BubbleCSI 500 Index

The Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index is a capitalization-weighted index. The index tracks the daily price performance of all A-shares and B-shares listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The index was developed on December 19, 1990 with a base value of 100. Index trade volume on Q is scaled down by a factor of 1000.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

On Saturday evening, China’s two stock exchanges — in Shanghai and in the far southern city, Shenzhen — issued notices suspending initial public offerings until further notice even for companies that already had provisional approval to list their shares. (source infra)

As Chinese stocks soared in the 12 months until their peak on June 12, the small- and medium-size companies with weak financial fundamentals fared the best. Many of them quadrupled, or rose even more, in value, while the overall index doubled because large-cap stocks lagged far behind. The small-cap and medium-cap stocks overwhelmingly tended to draw middle-class and working-class investors who were buying whatever stocks were rising fastest. The Shanghai market rose 149 percent in the year until June 12. By comparison, a stock price index of 100 large mainland Chinese companies that are traded in Hong Kong — and many of them in Shanghai, too — rose 24 percent over the same period. (source infra)

China's government-controlled Securities Association of China said that 21 big brokerage firms had agreed to set up a fund worth at least 120 billion renminbi, or $19.4 billion, to buy shares in the largest, most stable companies, and to stop selling shares from their own portfolios. But some experts said the moves might not be enough to stop the hemorrhaging of money from the stock market, particularly given that $105 billion in shares changed hands in Shanghai on Friday.--China Moves to Stabilize Stock Markets; Initial Offerings Halted - The New York Times

The world is addicted to fiscal stimulus and central bankers' fiat money, and as a result has too much debt--The Smartest Man is Wild about Innovation: "The whole world is suffering from too much debt. As a result, growth almost everywhere is going to be slow. I know you believe the problem is insufficient demand, but the major industrialized countries already have considerable debt and do not want to add any more to it to stimulate the consumer."

Monday, June 22, 2015

Why Goldman Sachs Is Diving Back Into the Dark Pool - Goldman Sachs, which called for reform of high-speed stock trading before Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys” spurred an outcry last year, is diving back in. Bloomberg's Michael Moore reports on high-speed stock trading on “Bloomberg Markets,” June 12th.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Investment Banking Era Is at Its End: Blain - Mint Partners Strategist Bill Blain and Bloomberg Intelligence’s Jonathan Tyce discuss plans by HSBC to cut 25,000 jobs and the state of investment banking. They speak with Jonathan Ferro on Bloomberg Television’s “On The Move,” June 9th.

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Why are New Yorker Cartoons referred to as "Drawings" in the Table of Contents? In the video above, Bob Mankoff explains--The Cartoon Lounge, with Bob Mankoff--he also talks about illness-themed cartoons.

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Martin O’Malley has "been in governance far longer, has accomplished more, is arguably just as liberal as [Elizabeth Warren]... and unlike Warren, he’s actually running for president. Why do some progressives tend to dismiss him as a mere technocrat who doesn’t inspire?" -- Michael Hirsh - POLITICO

Let me make this simple--it's over. The 2016 race, for President. Barring something unforeseen--an indictment, a disabling health issue, etc.--Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the United States. We all know what happened in 2008--a young, charismatic Senator from the State of Illinois knocked the wheels off the Clinton juggernaut(disclosure: I was an Obama supporter)--but it won't happen this time. O'Malley ain't no Obama. Oh sure, there are going to be some rough patches along the way. Hillary and Bill don't expect to just waltz back into the White House, they've been around the political game long enough to know better. But sometime after November, 2016, I fully expect to see Hill and Bill packing up for the move back to Washington.

The Republicans don't have anyone with the "right stuff," except perhaps Rand Paul, but the best he will be able to do is lay the groundwork for a 2020 or 2024 run for the White House. In the end, the Democrats will all coalesce around their sure winner. The world is a mess. Even the U.S. is stumbling--economically, socially, globally, politically--and Washington, D.C., is a self-serving cesspool of money and ambition. But the Clintons have already taken money from everybody, so there is no issue, foreign or domestic, where both sides haven't already attempted to "grease the wheels." In addition, Hillary will probably be playing for the history books as the first woman President.

If nothing else, the state of the nation and the world (see above), will ensure a Clinton victory in 2016. Fear is a great motivator, and people are fearful--"Dude, what happened to my country?"--the old people will come out in droves to vote for Hillary. The last place you want to be standing on election day in November, 2016, is between a gray-haired person and a polling place. So the GOP can cross off Florida even if Rubio OR Bush is the Republican nominee--yes, the Republicans' chances to win the White House are that bad in 2016.

Remember, when most people over the age of 45 think of Hillary, they actually think of "Bill and Hillary." That's actually a very good thing for Hillary, which I am not sure her campaign advisers understand at this point. Nobody is without sin as they say, and even Barbara Bush is now a big fan of Bill Clinton. Most older Americans remember the Clinton administration (1993-2000), as the "good years"-- prosperous, peaceful--heck we even had a federal budget surplus in some of those years thanks to the Republicans who controlled both houses of Congress, yet Bill was also able to triangulate and "get things done."

Of course, the media will, at least publicly, maintain the race (at whatever point) is "close" and will make mountains out of molehills at every chance they get in order to try to create some ratings for their dinosaur media properties. If you're a political junkie, have a good time. As for the rest of us, life goes on.

Monday, May 25, 2015

Most people (even some members of the Bush family) agree that Jeb Bush would have been a better President than his brother. But that doesn't mean Jeb will be, or should be, the next President. Time moves on. Opportunities lost are often, if not always, lost forever. That's the way it is in life, whether you are an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley or a politico Presidential wannabe.

We are hardly into the 2016 Presidential election cycle, and we are already witnessing the sad spectacle of Jeb trying to defend his brother's administration's disastrous foreign foray otherwise known as the Iraq War and other unwise policies--e.g.,the Patriot Act.

Florida already has one candidate in the 2016 race--Marco Rubio, and some would say that even that is "one too many." The US appears to be in a "leadership vacuum." The Republicans don't have anyone, save for possibly Rand Paul, with real Presidential leadership potential and a chance to win in 2016. The Democrats seem to be stuck in Clintonialismand gender politics--"Hillary should be elected President because she is a woman and would have been elected in 2008 but for Barack Obama!" or "we need a woman President--the first in history!" However, despite the negatives and the baggage, Hillary will probably be the "safe choice" and elected in 2016. The celebration will seem subdued in comparison to the jubilation accompanying Barack Obama in 2008, but the nation will move on.

In the meantime, Jeb, for the sake of the nation, his party, his family, and his own personal integrity, should gracefully exit the race.

Of course the beneficiaries have been the for-profit and non-profit colleges and universities whose own costs, including administrative salaries and staff size, have exploded due to the student loan program a/k/a government pork.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Secular Stagnation: Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers talks about economic growth and financial markets in the U.S. and China, and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Summers speaks with Erik Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle on the sidelines of the SALT Conference in Las Vegas on Bloomberg's Television's "Market Makers," on May 7th.

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Carl Icahn, activist shareholder and investor, is interviewed on Wall Street Week this Sunday, May 3rd--rumor has it this is a show worth catching online or on TV (see below).

About | Wall Street Week: "A revival of the iconic program originally hosted by Louis Rukeyser, Wall Street Week is focused on educating and empowering long-term investors. With unrivalled access to the biggest names and critical insights on the biggest stories, Wall Street Week is the show that sets the agenda for the week ahead. Produced by SkyBridge Media LLC., an affiliate of SkyBridge Capital."

Ferri is a former Marine Corps fighter pilot who spent the first decade of his career working as a retail stockbroker. In the 1990s, he came up with an idea for a low-cost portfolio based on exchange-traded funds while working at Smith Barney. He pitched the idea to the company’s chief at the time, Jamie Dimon, who shot it down. Ferri spent the next few years refining the idea and planning his own firm, which he started in 1999. He also is the author of several books, including “All About Index Funds: The Easy Way to Get Started. #investing

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Investing: The Fed and unintended consequences: "...The best bet for most people: Remain widely diversified. You'll need cash in case you need to write a check. You need bonds because if the economy falters, we could be looking at Japan-style interest rates. (Bond prices rise when interest rates fall, and vice-versa). And you need stocks because that's where you're most likely to get the highest returns over the long run. The more time you have before you'll need your money, the more you should have in stocks. And be brave. The law of unintended consequences also means that sometimes, good things happen when you least expect them. You never know." (read more at the link above)

Friday, April 17, 2015

Charles Masson lives restaurants, from legendary years spent at New York’s La Grenouille to his current directorship of Chevalier at the new Baccarat Hotel. Here he reveals the five ingredients every great dining room needs to succeed. (video by Zach Goldstein, Paul Cavrel) (Source: Bloomberg)

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Wait till the NEXT financial crisis! So says J.P. Morgan boss Jamie Dimon--in his annual letter to shareholders, the bank’s chief executive warned “there will be another crisis” — and the market reaction could be even more volatile, because regulations are now tougher."

Friday, April 10, 2015

Government programs for mortgage lending implicated in the Great Recession--

Mortgaging the Future? | The Big Picture: ".... in the postwar period an above average mortgage-lending boom unequivocally makes both financial and normal recessions worse. By year five GDP per capita can fall considerably, as much as 3 percentage points lower than it would have otherwise been. In contrast, booms in nonmortgage credit have virtually no effect on the shape of the recession in the same postwar period. Why the difference? At this point we can only speculate. A mortgage boom gone bust is typically followed by rapid household deleveraging, which tends to depress overall demand as borrowers shift away from consumption toward saving. This has been one of the most visible features of the slow U.S. recovery from the global financial crisis (Mian and Sufi 2014)... Our research suggests that the explosion of credit has played a more important role in shaping the business cycle than has been appreciated up to now. A growing consensus along these lines has renewed interest in revisiting the assumptions about cyclical macroprudential policy (for example, Aikman, Haldane, and Nelson 2014). Much of the recent expansion in bank lending took place through real estate lending, and this particular component of the credit mix appears to have the most relevant macroeconomic effects. A natural inference is that economic policy needs to adapt to this new reality." (read more at the link above)

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Bill Gross Is Very Bullish on Treasuries -
April 3 -- Janus Capital Group Portfolio Manager Bill Gross talks about his treasury holdings, his stance on the German Bund and his thoughts on Greece. He speaks on Bloomberg's "Surveillance."

Friday, April 3, 2015

Greek leaders met with European officials to come up with a plan to get Greece's economy back on track. The country may run out of money as soon as early April if no agreement is reached. Bloomberg's Joe Weisnethal looked at five charts that explain Greece's ongoing financial problems. (Charts by: Maxime Sbaihi, video by: Kelly Buzby, David Yim)

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

March 25 -- “Flash Boys” Author and Bloomberg View Columnist Michael Lewis discusses high frequency trading a year after the release of his book. He spoke March 25th on “Bloomberg Surveillance.” His opinions are his own.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Goodbye to War Loan: 1917 to 2015 - To commemorate this most interesting of gilts we have made a film about War Loan – one that tells the economic history of the UK through wars, default, the re-joining and leaving of the gold standard, the inflationary 1970s, the loss of the UK’s AAA credit rating, and finally the deflation that has followed the Great Financial Crisis.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

A U.S. penny forged in 1792 is up for auction at Stack's Bowers in Baltimore, with an estimated value of $2 million. If the March 26 auction meets expectations, the coin will have realized a 200 million percent increase in value in 223 years. Bloomberg's James Tarmy has more on "Taking Stock."

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

The 2015 Commonfund prize has just been granted to an academic paper that concludes:

we find no evidence that [consultants']... recommendations add value, suggesting that the search for winners, encouraged and guided by investment consultants, is fruitless

the portfolio of all products recommended by investment consultants delivered average returns net of management fees of 6.31% per year (7.13% before fees). These returns are, on average 1.12% lower than the returns obtained by other products available to plan sponsors, which are not recommended by consultants.

Consultants face a conflict of interest, as arguably they have a vested interest in complexity. Proposing an active US equity strategy, which involves more due diligence, complexity, monitoring, switching and therefore more consultancy work, drives up consulting revenues in comparison to simple cheap solutions.

investment consultants themselves are shy of disclosing the sort of information which would allow plan sponsors, or any outsider, to measure their own performance.

Moral of the story: when making any investment based on the recommendation of another, always look at the vested interest of the person(s) making the recommendation--usually the conflict of interest is obvious, but in other cases, you have to dig deeper.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Published on Feb 20, 2015: China’s economic growth rate fell to 7.4% in 2014, and many believe the official figure is actually more generous than the reality. Most forecasts expect growth to come in well under 7.0% in 2015. What are we to make of these trends? Are we at the beginning of a hard landing where the long history of structural inefficiencies are finally and inescapably being revealed and the possibilities of a financial crisis more ever looming? Or are we in a gradual shift toward a “new normal” of healthier and still relatively robust growth as a result of foresighted policy adjustments? Or is something else going on altogether? Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research, is a veteran analyst of the China’s economy and economic policy process. She travels widely in China in order to compare official data with actual behavior and performance. Bob Davis of the Wall Street Journal is a leading expert on macroeconomic policy and recently completed an extended posting in Beijing, where he wrote regularly about China’s economy.

Featuring:
Anne Stevenson-Yang
Co-founder and Research Director, J Capital Research

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

In an exclusive interview, Roubini Global Economics Co-Founder Nouriel Roubini discusses what a Greek exit from the euro would look like. He speaks to Bloomberg's Jonathan Ferro from the Ambrosetti Spring Workshop in Cernobbio, Italy.

Friday, March 13, 2015

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi speaks about its bond purchase plans and the effectiveness of policy on March 5.Watch all the key moments from Draghi's news conference in Nicosia in two minutes. (Excerpts.)

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Frontier markets are the wild west of the investing world. They can be dangerous, corrupt and often poverty-stricken but they can also be hugely lucrative. Bloomberg’s Gavin Serkin travelled with some of the world’s best-performing fund managers to find out which markets are worth the trouble. He reveals his findings in his book "Frontier: Exploring the Top Ten Emerging Markets of Tomorrow." March 5, 2015

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

In a world where growth is scarce and prospects aren't improving, an unspoken currency war has broken out. The short term pay-off might be a boost in exports, but, according to Bloomberg View's Mark Gilbert, there can be no real winners in the end.

Thursday, March 5, 2015

Rudin Management CEO and Vice Chairman William Rudin and Citi Research North America Economics Head William Lee discuss the impact of low oil prices on the economy and the oil industry. They speak on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Warren Buffett bet Seides and his partners in 2007 ($1 million initially, to go to charity) that an S&P 500 index fund would do better for investors than a hand-picked assortment of hedge funds over the ensuing ten years. Through Dec. 31, the index fund had gained 7.2% a year, far outpacing the 2.6% return of the hedge funds as a group. Buffett made the simple - and empirically airtight - point that the heavy fees collected by hedge funds over time will consume more than 100% of the extra return a fund manager is able to deliver. As it turned out, fees did cost some 2.6% annualized from the hedge funds’ results - but this only deepened the underperformance cause by other means. (source infra)

Michael Santoli's Tumblr — Cry me a river that leads to Omaha The Fed and other central banks responded to the 2008 financial calamity by dropping rates to zero and keeping them there, driving stocks higher and depriving hedge funds of any income on cash held. The U.S. stock market vastly outran foreign equities, penalizing hedge funds’ global posture. Structural changes in the arena of borrowing and shorting stocks picked hedgies’ pockets as they tried to gain downside market exposure. So, the sharpest, best-connected, most highly compensated tactical predators in the markets (hedge funds) were undercut by central bankers who preferred the world economy didn’t fail and technological progress in trading mechanics - and over seven years they failed as a group to anticipate, embrace or maneuver around these shifts. (read more at link above)

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Feb. 19, 2015 -- There are an estimated 1,500 people in the U.S. serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for crimes committed while they were juveniles. It's called JLWOP and in 2012 the Supreme Court ruled the sentence was unconstitutional. But the court did not address what to do about the people already serving JWLOP sentences. George Toca was one of them. On Jan. 29, 2015, he was released after signing a plea agreement with the Orleans Parish District Attorney. Bloomberg spent a day with Toca as he experienced his new life on the outside. (Video by Jennafer Savino, David Yim)

Thursday, February 26, 2015

As a follow-up to Tuesday's post of Shilling on an Abundance of Commodities--Gary Shilling on Why You Should Own Bonds [Source: Advisor Perspectives, excerpt follows, full article at link]:

"Global devaluations - The currencies of commodity-producing countries have been weakening... The euro is being “deliberately trashed” by the ECB, he said, which is looking to spur exports. The follow-on will come from nearby currencies, Shilling said. South Korea is devaluing in response to Japan’s actions. While most central banks are devaluing through quantitative easing, some are cutting interest rates to weaken their currencies. We now face an environment of “universal devaluations,” Shilling said. The only winner is the dollar (except for Switzerland and Denmark who, he said, cannot devalue because of trading relationships). “We are stuck,” he said, with a strong currency."Investment recommendations - Shilling still recommends the long-dates U.S. Treasury bonds. Forecasts by economists have been for rising rates, he said, going back as far as 1981. But those forecasts have been consistently wrong. “I think the 10-year is going to 1%,” he said, “not 2.9% as economists forecast.” That would result in a 12% return over a one-year horizon. It’s not just because U.S. Treasury bonds are safe haven, he said, but also because their spread is high relative to all other sovereign bonds... Investors should short commodities, particularly copper, he said... Stocks overall, he said, are still expensive, based on the Shiller CAPE ratio...“With Fed out of the picture, we are going back to much greater dispersion and volatility.”... prepare for a risk of a “shock” that could result in a worldwide recession and a bear market... the only change to his investment recommendation would be to avoid all stocks...."Follow @johnmpoole

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Austerity programs demanded by Greece's debtors are pinching the country's economy. And history shows that very few countries have been able to meet the surpluses the Troika is asking for from Greece. Blooomberg's Brendan Greeleyexplains how to measure austerity and how it is unlikely to help Greece get out of debt. (Feb 19, 2015)

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Can Corruption Be Eradicated?: "....It seems unlikely that any outside force can introduce enough carrots and sticks to persuade a country to reform its political system. When Romania was campaigning for admission to the European Union, in 2003, it launched an anticorruption drive, and appointed a tough justice minister who spurred a series of corruption cases against senior officials. As soon as Romania joined the E.U., in 2007, the campaign fizzled, the justice minister was fired, and the cases were dropped. “A fish rots from the head,” Chayes observes, and, in the absence of national leaders with integrity and political will, it doesn’t appear that the United States will be able to reverse the pathologies in Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other country, notwithstanding Washington’s share in creating and sustaining some of those pathologies. Indeed, we may struggle to differentiate between the kinds of patronage that might assuage a population—the “glue” that Thomas Barfield describes—and the state-sanctioned larceny that Chayes argues, convincingly, is a threat not just to Afghanistan’s national security but to that of the United States...." (read more at the link above)

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Real Story of How America Became an Economic Superpower - The Atlantic: "... Tooze’s story ends where our modern era starts: with the advent of a new European order—liberal, democratic, and under American protection. Yet nothing lasts forever. The foundation of this order was America’s rise to unique economic predominance a century ago. That predominance is now coming to an end as China does what the Soviet Union and Imperial Germany never could: rise toward economic parity with the United States. That parity has not, in fact, yet arrived, and the most realistic measures suggest that the moment of parity won’t arrive until the later 2020s. Perhaps some unforeseen disruption in the Chinese economy—or some unexpected acceleration of American prosperity—will postpone the moment even further. But it is coming, and when it does, the fundamental basis of world-power politics over the past 100 years will have been removed. Just how big and dangerous a change that will be is the deepest theme of Adam Tooze's profound and brilliant grand narrative." (read more at the link above)

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